We have developed analytic methods that establish molecular constraints to photochemical efficiency in the engineering and construction of molecular photochemical materials and devices useful to addressing the global energy challenge. The absence, to-date, of analytic procedures has seriously handicapped progress in the development of photochemical devices. The new methods will provide important precise engineering guidelines to photochemical device construction in the future.

Already aided by these engineering rules, designed photochemical maquette proteins have been constructed that display long-lived generation of oxidant and reductant, an essential step in the goal to produce devices able to produce chemical fuels from sunlight.